After bringing the Moon to Dorchester the town council are to go one better and bring Mars – or at least a large-scale model of it.

Councillors have agreed to give a £3,000 grant from its arts and culture reserve to bring the large Mars model to the town for the Dorchester Science Fair in March 2022.

It had previously paid to bring Luke Jerram's Moon to the county town in July 2019 intending display it outside at Maumbury Rings but bad weather forced it indoors, to the Corn Exchange, where it drew hundreds of visitors over several days.

The seven-metre diameter model of the Moon, based on NASA imagery, was internally lit, as is the similar sized model of Mars.

It has been on display at the Natural History Museum in London to mark the UK Space Agency's work on the NASA Perseverance Rover mission to the planet.

At 7m in diameter it is 1.1million times smaller than the actual planet.